Individual specific trails in the antLeptothorax affinis (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

Maschwitz, U.; Lenz, Sarah; Buschinger, Alfred

doi:10.1007/bf01941298

Cited by 37 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…Informed workers could rely on at least two types of private information: navigational memories allowing them to find the familiar nest using visual cues in the environment, and individual-specific chemical trails leading from the old nest to the familiar nest. Although both strategies are well documented in T. albipennis and related Temnothorax species [navigational memory (Aron et al, 1988;Pratt et al, 2001;McLeman et al, 2002); individual-specific trails (Maschwitz et al, 1986;Aron et al, 1988)], our results suggest that memory of visual cues strongly dominates over chemical orientation in the present context. The 180deg rotation of all chemicals did not impair the ability of workers to discover the familiar nest earlier than the unfamiliar nest during emigrations and did not modify the colonies' overall preference for the familiar nest.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

“…We performed a second experiment to investigate the relative importance of navigational memory and individual-specific chemical trails in the early discoveries of the familiar nest by informed workers (see below) (Maschwitz et al, 1986;Aron et al, 1988). In this experiment, the floors of all dishes and tunnels were covered with fitted acetate sheets, and pairs of identical proximate landmarks were positioned symmetrically in both branches of the arena.…”

Section: Experiments 2: Navigational Memory Versus Chemical Orientationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Information about suitable sites is initially gathered by the workers that discover and explore the sites. It could then potentially be stored in two, non-exclusive forms: in a common repository of information, such as pheromones (social information) marking the nest itself or leading to it, or in the memories of informed workers and/or individual-specific chemical marking (private information), frequently used by Temnothorax ants (Maschwitz et al, 1986;Aron et al, 1988;Danchin et al, 2004;Wagner and Danchin, 2010). In the latter case, informed individuals accessing this information could play a key role during later emigrations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Knowledgeable individuals lead collective decisions in ants

Stroeymeyt

Franks

Giurfa

2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYSelf-organisation underlies many collective processes in large animal groups, where coordinated patterns and activities emerge at the group level from local interactions among its members. Although the importance of key individuals acting as effective leaders has recently been recognised in certain collective processes, it is widely believed that self-organised decisions are evenly shared among all or a subset of individuals acting as decision-makers, unless there are significant conflicts of interests among group members. Here, we show that certain individuals are disproportionately influential in self-organised decisions in a system where all individuals share the same interests: nest site selection by the ant Temnothorax albipennis. Workers that visited a good available nest site prior to emigration (the familiar nest) memorised its location, and later used this memory to navigate efficiently and find that nest faster than through random exploration. Additionally, these workers relied on their private information to expedite individual decisions about the familiar nest. This conferred a bias in favour of familiar nests over novel nests during emigrations. Informed workers were shown to have a significantly greater share in both recruitment and transport to the familiar nest than naïve workers. This suggests that they were the main determinants of the collective preference for familiar nests, and thus contributed greatly to enhance collective performance. Overall, these results indicate that self-organised decisions are not always evenly shared among decision-makers, even in systems where there are no conflicts of interest. Animal groups may instead benefit from well-informed, knowledgeable individuals acting as leaders in decisions. Supplementary material available online at

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

Section: Experiments 2: Navigational Memory Versus Chemical Orientationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Knowledgeable individuals lead collective decisions in ants

Stroeymeyt

Franks

Giurfa

2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…A still finer level of specificity has recently been demonstrated among individual colony members, a surprising finding, given the prevailing view that individual differentiation among social insect workers is weak. Individual-specific orientation trails have been discovered in the ants Pachycondyla tesserinoda and Leptothorax affinis (20,21), among others. The source of these highly specific markers and how they are chemically composed are not yet known.…”

Section: Pheromone Blendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The chemistry of social regulation: multicomponent signals in ant societies.

Hölldobler¹

1995

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

110

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Chemical signals mediating communication in ant societies are usually complex mixtures of substances with considerable variation in molecular composition and in relative proportions of components. Such multicomponent signals can be produced in single exocrine glands, but they can also be composed with secretions from several glands. This variation is often functional, identifying groups or specific actions on a variety of organizational levels. Chemical signals can be further combined with cues from other sensory modalities, such as vibrational or tactile stimuli. These kinds of accessory signals usually serve in modulatory communication, lowering the response threshold in the recipient for the actual releasing stimulus. Comparative studies suggest that modulatory signals evolved through ritualization from actions originally not related to the same behavioral context, and modulatory signals may further evolve to become independent releasing signals.The impressive diversity and ecological dominance of ant societies are in large part due to their efficient social organization and the underlying communication system. The functional division into reproductive and sterile castes, the cooperation in rearing the young, gathering food, defending the nest, exploring new foraging grounds, establishing territorial borders, and discriminating and excluding foreigners from the society are regulated by the precise transmission of social signals in time and space.Probably the best-studied communication behavior in ants is chemical communication, but other sensory modalities, such as mechanical cues, also play an important role in the formation of multicomponent signals in ant communication. Chemical releasers are produced in a variety of exocrine glands, and considerable progress has been made in chemically identifying many of these glandular secretions (for reviews see refs. 1 and 2). In this essay I will not emphasize, however, the natural product chemistry of ant pheromones, but rather concentrate on the proposition that communication in ant societies is often based on multicomponent signals, on nested levels of variation in chemical and other cues, which feature both anonymous and specific characteristics (3). Pheromone BlendsSingle exocrine glands usually produce mixtures of substances. The Dufour's gland secretions of the carpenter ant Camponotus ligniperda, for example, include at least 41 compounds (4), and the mandibular glands of the weaver ant Oecophylla longinoda contain over 30 compounds, in colony-specific pro-The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. §1734 solely to indicate this fact.portions (5, 6). The identification of these components has mostly out-paced an understanding of their function, but in a few cases we begin to realize that the blends are part of the complex behavior-releasing key stimulus. In Oecophylla, for example, the mixture of mandibular gland secretions...

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“…In the social insects higher levels of recognition are needed, and indeed are expressed in many pheromones. In Lasius neoniger food trails are nest specific [3], while in Pachicondyla tesserinoda [4] and Leptothorax affinis [5] individual trails are deposited. Individual signals are also used in other contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The significance of multicomponent pheromones in denoting specific compositions

Hefetz

Graur

1988

Biochemical Systematics and Ecology

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. Abetract--The chemical composition of Dufour's gland secretions of 13 species of halictine bees was investigated. The secretions were composed of a series of macrocyclic lactones, hydrocarbons and isopentenyl esters. The number and relative intensities of these compounds were unevenly disu'ibuted among the species, i.e. the secretions were species specific. Based on the empirical date, an algorithm was constructed in order to assess how many of the components present in a secretion are required to discriminate between species, non-related conspecific individuals or nestmates. The results demonstrate that the number of components required for recognition increases with the increase in the level of specificity and with the number of individuals to be identified. The number of compounds denoting identity in a species specific blend may be surprisingly low. Using a similar technique, we assessed the number of components a secretion must contain in order to obtain individual recognition at different levels of relatedness. Several predictions regarding the level of recognition that can be attained by a given pheromone in a given population can be made from these theoretical results.

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Individual specific trails in the antLeptothorax affinis (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

Abstract: Leptothorax affinis lays chemical trails during nest emigration. Workers which carried colony members during nest movement refused trails of nest mates and searched for their own trails. The origin of the individual specific trail substance could not be localized.

Cited by 37 publications

References 2 publications

Knowledgeable individuals lead collective decisions in ants

Knowledgeable individuals lead collective decisions in ants

The chemistry of social regulation: multicomponent signals in ant societies.

The significance of multicomponent pheromones in denoting specific compositions

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